Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: XRP becomes 3rd largest coin in the world over the weekend, some big crypto execs keep selling stock, Telegram tapping into NFTs, JPMorgan still holding out on scammer funds, a massive crypto exchange launches stock trading, Saylor is coizing up with the Trumps, and more

We hope everyone had a relaxing past two weeks with Christmas and the New Year!

We appreciate all 67,000 Crypto Sum readers - 2025 is going to massive and we can’t wait to deliver value every singe day. We are also soon going to be doing Sunday project breakdowns so make sure to look out for those!

If you work for crypto focused start up or coin project that is interested in a full breakdown by our team reach out here.

Happy Monday, let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3676.09, up 4.19% since 4 p.m. EST on Thursday - below are gains since the same time stamp

  • Leaders: ADA (+14.9%), ICP (+14.6%) BTC (+4%), ETH (+5.7%)

• Traders expect bitcoin price-action to remain rangebound until late January, with gains expected from February onward as President-elect Donald Trump takes office, as a CoinDesk analysis previously noted

• ADA’s bump had no immediate catalyst, but the protocol is set to see several fundamental developments in the coming months

  • These include a bitcoin-centric decentralized financial ecosystem and ongoing efforts to improve Cardano’s scalability, network performance and interoperability with other networks

  • Price-chart analysis suggests further gains of as much as 30% for the token ahead

  • “The breakout and a renewed bullish crossover on the momentum indicator MACD suggest the potential for a re-test of the Dec. 3 high of $1.32.” per CoinDesk analyst Omkar Godbole

Market Predictions

• Traders on Kalshi are currently predicting if Trump will create a National Bitcoin Reserve before Jan 1st 2026

• You can trade this market by checking out Kalshi

• Get a $20 bonus when you deposit $100 or more with code “LIT” on signup

Headline Roundup
^{_{The major headlines driving crypto markets}}

• VC Chamath Palihapitiya predicts stablecoin adoption will challenge Visa’s and Mastercard’s duopoly in 2025 (BT)

• AI models predict massive gains for major coins, see the full list here

• Michael Saylor meets with Eric Trump at Mar-a-Lago (BM)

• Coinbase and MicroStrategy executives were top insider stock sellers in 2024 (BW) 

• JPMorgan is withholding $43K from a scammed Bank of America customer (DH) 

• Metaplanet Inc. plans to increase its Bitcoin holdings by 470%, aiming to reach 10,000 BTC this year (DC)

• XRP becomes 3rd-largest cryptocurrency by market cap (CT)

• Bitcoin processed over $19T in transactions in 2024 (CT) 

• Bitcoin miner MARA said it deployed 16% of its BTC holdings, 7,377 BTC worth nearly $730M, in short-term third-party loans (TB)

• MicroStrategy plans to raise $2B via preferred stock to buy more Bitcoin (TB)

• China denies involvement in hacking US Treasury Department (CT) 

• US Ethereum ETFs record over $2B of inflows in December (TB) 

• Pump.fun transfers $55.6M of Solana to Kraken (TML)

• Marathon Digital mined 890 Bitcoin in December and increased its hash rate by 15% (TD) 

• US accounts for over 40% of Bitcoin’s global hash rate (CT) 

• Elon Musk's profile change causes 75% drop in Kekius Maximus memecoin (TB) 

• Frax approves BlackRock's BUIDL token to back its frxUSD stablecoin(TB) 

• Tether and Bitfinex General Counsel Stuart Hoegner to retire with Michael Hilliare set to take his place (TB) 

• Bitcoin’s hash rate hits new ATH (CT) 

• Coinbase is exploring tokenizing its shares on its L2 Base for US users (CT)

• Insider wallets on Solana’s Focai memecoin made $20M from $14.6K (CT)

• Bitcoin miner BitFuFu agrees to purchase up to 80K miners from Bitmain (CT) 

• Man convicted of $400K NFT rug pull dies by apparent suicide (DC) 

• Telegram to enable converting gifts into tradable NFTs (DC) 

• Scatter COO Haiku steps down from Milady-themed NFT platform (TB)

• PUBG creator ‘not even thinking about’ NFTs for upcoming metaverse (CT)

Launches

• Crypto.com launches stock trading in the US (CS) 

• Solana launches Winternitu Vault to protect assets from quantum computing threats (CP) 

• Crypto wallet Phantom confirms it won’t launch a token amid airdrop rumors (CT)

• AMBER Mining launches FCA-compliant Bitcoin cloud mining contracts (CN) 

• Virtuals Protocol fixes a reported bug and relaunches its bug bounty program (CT)

Venture Capital

• OKX Ventures invests in Sui-based liquid staking protocol Haedal (CN)

• JAN3 raised a $5M seed round from Fulgur Ventures, Tether, and others, with a focus on developing its Bitcoin and Liquid Network wallet AQUA (TB)

Regulation

• Pro-Crypto lawyer Deaton calls for congressional probe into FDIC activity (DC)

Cybersecurity

• California man suing three Asian banks for failing to prevent $1M crypto scam (CT) 

Extra Reads

• Crypto “Artificial Intelligent Agent” coins are pumping: Virtuals, ai16z, VaderAI & other agents had huge gains over the holidays

  Here’s a full breakdown why

Chart of the Day

Blackrock Sells 3510 Bitcoin

Largest ever outflow

Meme Dump

Pls send us crypto memes to be featured in the newsletter 🤝

🐦 Follow Us: Visit our X account for constant updates on all things web3, DeFi, and crypto.

💵 Litquidity Ventures: Accredited investors & qualified purchasers within the Litquidity community can gain access to alternative investments such as venture, late-stage growth, and private equity through Litquidity Ventures. Interested? Fill out this form.

☎️ Book a call with Lit: Want to pick Litquidity’s brain on business advice, insights, or just chat to say what’s up? Buy his time here.

📧 Launch your own newsletter: Have great content ideas and looking to launch your own publication? We highly recommend Beehiiv to get started.